Bill Gates gives his vision of the future

BBC's Click Online programme has as interview where Bill Gates gives his ideas of what schools of the future might be like and how ICT can support and enhance teaching and learning in a technological savy society.In the interview he mentions 'training the teachers' four times and obviously sees this as a real fundamental part of the advancement process.

Back in the NOF training days the then Government felt that they had made a start and so they had. The problem has arisen that technological progress world wide has continued but the levels of training have not. It was never intended to be a 'one trick pony'. The basic bits were only basic bits for the time and, rather like in University Challenge were simply starters to get people into the meat of things.

'Hands on Support' in some places has moved teachers forward incrementally but has been fighting a retrenchment battle, providing teachers with skills and concepts to get up to date but often, not to move ahead. Not the fault of the system nor the trainers, just a battle too hard with too few resources.

I read now of enlightened courses being run by students for their teachers (where students mentor teachers). These spontaneous sessions are designed to get the teachers on-board with the technology being used by their students so that advantage can be taken of this knowledge to support learning.

So what is it we need for teachers to support them, not just to keep up, but to be ahead?